9 to 3 Lag Building Drills
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Learn how to build lag in your golf swing with these 9 to 3 lag building drills. You'll learn how to build lag, get shaft lean at impact and how to release the golf club.
Training Aids Used:
RotaryConnect
Impact Cube
- Holding wrists and forearms tight does not maintain lag - keep wrists soft to allow the weight of the club head to pull back naturally
- Drill: Weight your club and make tiny one-handed swings, feeling the flow & staying very loose
- Add in some weight shift with each swing, keeping weight over the ankles
- Remove the weight & swing again, keeping the wrist flat in the backswing
- Make longer (9 to 3) swings, one hand at a time, focusing on keeping the wrist supple
- With right hand, the club should be vertical when it is in front of the left leg
- With left hand, the club should still be parallel to the ground when the hand is at the right thigh
- Don't turn your body - the chest should still point at the ball
- Use both hands for full 9 to 3 Drill, keeping left wrist flat & extending right arm as in Throw the Ball Drill
Today we're going to take that 9 to 3 drill and build on it so we start building more lag into your 9 to 3 drills.
As you remember, at the end of the 9 to 3 drill, I said if you want to start taking this to the next level and hitting the ball a little bit further, rather than making much of a bigger swing or anything, you just add a little bit of wrist cock.
However, what a lot of golfers do is they start adding that wrist cock way too soon.
I've talked about this in the takeaway video.
I want to talk a little bit more about it today, why you don't want to do that, and how you want to learn to do the correct way that's going to give you more power and more control, even though at first it's going to feel like you have less.
That's what's kind of fun about this.
It's a little bit of a mind game of learning to give up control to gain control.
So just to recap very briefly, 9 to 3, we're just going here.
This is 9 o'clock, 6 o'clock, 3 o'clock, and the release.
Today what we're going to do is that same drill, but we're going to start adding lag to it.
And what you're typically going to see, most golfers do, and you probably have made this mistake yourself, is that you set your wrist right away, or you roll them in correctly, or do something to get the club out of sync with your rotating body.
As you've learned in the belly button drill, I want you to imagine that the club is only moving because your body's turning.
They're moving together during the backswing to keep everything synced up.
If you start doing this, now you've got to unwind all this wrist movement you've put in the swing.
But when it comes to power, You're setting yourself in a position where you're going to want to cast the club because you're creating a lot of tension in your forearms very early.
And in the golf swing, it builds like a crescendo.
So it keeps building more and more and more tension.
And as you get to the top and start down, you've got so much tension, your brain is just screaming, I need to get rid of this.
And so what you want to do is actually the opposite.
So when you're learning how to do these nine to three drills and adding lag and start getting this feeling of having a little more syrupy, good tempo to your swing, we're going to practice by just using our hands, not our body at first, because we're going to get the feeling of what the hands need to do correctly.
And what you want to feel is that your hands leave the club behind the whole time.
So I'm going to exaggerate this.
So I'm taking it back and I'm almost imagining I'm leaving the club literally at a dress and just dragging it back.
And then as I change directions, you notice the club starts to lag behind the other way, which gives me shaffling.
Now, if I set the wrist early, I'm going to want to throw the wrist early.
And that's going to not only get rid of shaffling, but get rid of lag and power as well.
So we want to get the feeling of dragging the club back with our body and our hands.
And then as you shift directions, that's when your wrist really set.
As you take this into the full swing, it's the same deal.
You're dragging the club back and then you're really setting your wrist more during the down.
So when we talk about this in the down cock pump drill.
So for here, we're going to do this in baby steps back, almost my wrists have almost no set.
This is a little bit of an exaggeration, but it's a good way to exaggerate the feeling of letting the club float going back and then you load it coming down.
And that gives you the proper wrist set and the proper shaffling at impact.
A great way to practice this, like with all other rotary swing drills is with one hand at a time.
If you do just your left hand only, you get the feeling of how, if you start trying to do a bunch with your hands, the club's very difficult to control.
So with your left hand only, especially if you're right -handed, your non-dominant hand, it becomes, This drill becomes a lot more challenging to get the feel of how to get to the impact position correctly without setting our wrist and trying to control it.
And hold onto this club with the death grip.
You want to hold onto the club very soft so that your wrists stay relaxed.
And that's what allows them to float going back.
So you're going left hand only, nice and easy, letting it set on the way down.
And then the same thing, right hand only, letting it set during the transition.
And as you combine this with the RST five-step stuff, the first thing you'd want to do is add weight shift.
Weight shift is what makes this wrist set actually happen in the swing.
We're just trying to get a feel for it at first by isolating it and just doing it with our hands only.
But as you get comfortable, now we can start adding weight shift and body rotation.
Weight shift, core rotation, same thing going back and through.
I can do it with my right hand.
Weight shift is what sets the wrist.
And then with both hands, of course, as I shift back to the left, now you can see even just doing these little tiny swings, I've got great speed that's going to hit the ball a good distance with such a short swing.
The cool thing is you can start combining this with all of the other drills and training aids that we have on the site.
So if you have an orange whip or a gold flex, this is going to really exaggerate it because now you can see the shaft bend dramatically as you go back.
And then if I go back the other way, you're going to feel immediately how this guy wants to load dramatically and unload.
Now, the cool thing about using something like this is that it really helps you at the hitting area to feel the release.
Because what you'll notice is if you're too fast and aggressive and trying to really drive your hands through the hitting area.
Instead of letting the club head release, what you're going to notice, your hands are way out here and the club's still bent back here.
So it's going to look like this.
That's not going to work.
You want the club to release, which means you've got to learn to be patient, especially with this, and wait on it to load, stress the shaft, and then give it time to unload rather than driving through.
This is the whole secret to effortless power.
You can learn right here, right now doing this drill because what you want to feel is not trying to force the club through, but is feeling the club head release and catch back up with the hands and forearms so it can turn over.
Now you can see my body's just posting up and all I got to do is let that club head release and catch up.
This is awesome to exaggerate the feeling of having this kind of syrupy float loading move in your swing and getting a proper down cock coming down.
Now for those of you that have rotary connects, do the same thing, but what you're going to really focus on with the connect is two things.
One, rotation going back.
Slide the connect up your body and put the bar up against your chest.
So this is going to be sitting up high against your arms.
And then what you're going to do is move this bar going back and imagine the bar and the club shaft make a 90 degree angle.
During the initial part of the takeaway, you want to maintain that 90 degree angle.
They're going back together.
My body turn is moving the club, not my wrist.
Notice I no longer have a 90 degree angle.
Going back and then float load and release.
Now you'll notice as I come through, my chest is just barely open.
I can see that by making a 90 degree angle to the bar, my chest is barely open.
If you're like this, I didn't release the club.
I released my body.
That takes way more work for way less effort.
Another thing that you can do again, putting all of these together is use an impact bag to get the feeling of getting into the proper impact position, doing this drill and releasing the club at the bag.
So I'm going to use the backside here.
That's got the shaft lean side and I'm going to go back.
Now you notice that my hands are leading the club head still, but I don't want them too far ahead.
If I'm like this, what did I do?
Well, now I turned my chest and I didn't release the club.
That cost me speed.
I want the club head to release at the bag.
That's the point where we need speed, not out here.
It's too late.
So using these nine to three lag building drills of learning how to let your wrist be very relaxed, Using some training aids to help you develop the feel and learning how to release at the right time.
Will take your nine to three drill to a place where you'll probably hit the ball further, doing a nine to three drill with lag than you do with your full swing right now.
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